Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melvillewas an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period best known for Typee, a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick. His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style:...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 August 1819
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
So philosophers so throughly comprehend us as horses.
Grub, ho! now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we went to breakfast.
No utter surprise can come to him Who reaches Shakespeare's core; That which we seek and shun is there - Man's final lore
From without, no wonderful effect is wrought within ourselves, unless some interior, responding wonder meets it. That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings, is only because we ourselves are greater miracles, and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space.
Meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Nature is nobody's ally.
Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?
I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.
Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.
I try all things, I achieve what I can.
The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run